With various known search service providers, natural language searches are used for discovery of web pages accessible on the Internet with a browser, and discovery of emails and contacts accessible on a server with an email web application. Separately, a user can search for files stored locally on their computer or other devices using search mechanisms provided by the operating system. However, these search mechanisms cannot be used by the user to search through personal files both locally on a personal computer and remotely stored on other devices and a server. Furthermore, when a user continually changes files, it is difficult to ascertain what version of a file may have been shared with another user.
Accordingly, there is a need for improved methods for content searching, in particular methods that allow searching across various devices and platforms.